


Thicker Than Leaves

by PerpetuaLilium



Category: The Lord of the Rings - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Friendship, Gen, Male Friendship, Post-Canon, Post-War of the Ring
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-26
Updated: 2018-12-26
Packaged: 2019-09-27 16:15:45
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 616
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17165162
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PerpetuaLilium/pseuds/PerpetuaLilium
Summary: Treebeard and Gimli, post-war, get to understand each other.





	Thicker Than Leaves

**Author's Note:**

> My Tolkien Secret Santa 2018 fic, which I wrote for someone on Tumblr whose AO3 presence, if any, I'm unsure of.

Treebeard had never been as familiar as he sometimes claimed to be with Dwarves, but he did not see his opinions about the bearded little folk as ignorant so much as simply informed by counsel other than his own. He had a difficult time thinking anything good of axes, and he had a difficult time thinking of the dark-housed delvers without thinking of their axes, taken to trees for firewood for forges, in days before the burning of coal, now long out of memory not his own.

Master Gimil came from Aglarond once some time after the War, although to Treebeard’s mind it was only as much time as one might expect between visits from old friends; those who came to the Treegarth more often, came too often for his liking, and their hasty and frequent presence tended to tire him more than he cared to confess to the fleeting people. Elves only before had given him the time he wished, but by the moment, as he understood moments, there were fewer and fewer Elves, and more and more Men, halest and hastiest of the free peoples.

Often Treebeard thought that it would be nice to take a rest. He might even, he thought, take his time so much as to become treeish, now, if the visits slowed a little. Some of the younger and hastier Ents, even, were settling down now, settling into themselves and becoming a little slower, a little more patient, a little more like the Huorns day to day. He liked more and more these days the idea of becoming firm, stern, fast, but pliable, growing, rooted, in communication with the still and only very slowly changing earth. The years, they said, lay thicker than leaves in Lothlórien; so too might it be, he thought, one day in the Treegarth of Orthanc.

He came to appreciate, however, that visit from Master Gimli, a visit that told him what was going on in the world, a visit that told him that the Age of Men was in good hands insofar as the hands of the free people could be good; Gimli, it seemed, had come to care about trees, and as he thought of becoming treeish, Treebeard had come to care also about earth and stone. They talked not of hewing but of the beauty of the world, a world that might pass, a world where nothing was guaranteed, not even the continuation of goodness, or the continuation of victory.

“Will you settle here, or in Fangorn, if you put down roots?” Gimli asked.

“Hmm, well, let us not answer such a question in too much of a hurry,” said Treebeard. “Striding around is still not beyond me, and there are things to be said for old dark forests and new bright woods alike. Hmm, we cannot see all ends, as Mithrandir was used to say—not even the wise, and I do not count myself among the wise.”

“You do not? Many do.”

“To count myself among the wise, I would like to know,” said Treebeard, “what wisdom might be, by the lights of the hastier peoples.

“I did quite like seeing you and Master Legolas, you know, when you traveling in Fangorn, _burrum,”_ he went on, after a moment.

“And we you,” said Gimli. “As it was to see Fangorn in better days, so I thought it might be to see Orthanc as well. It has become more to my taste to see trees and growing things than it had formerly used to be; a good world it is, that has both thinks that grow and things that endure in it.”

“Indeed,” said Treebeard. “A good world, for a while anyway.”


End file.
